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==== Notes On The Luddites ==== | ==== Notes On The Luddites ==== | ||
- | Luddite Bicentenary | + | Luddite Bicentenary. http:// |
According to wikipedia | According to wikipedia | ||
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https:// | https:// | ||
+ | < | ||
+ | Bioluddites come from a variety of political backgrounds, | ||
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+ | http:// | ||
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* http:// | * http:// | ||
- | ====Notes==== | + | ====Reading |
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+ | From: The Shuttle Exchanged for the Sword by Warren Draper (In Dark Mountain Issue 2) | ||
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+ | All mythologies have their monsters, and for modern industrial civilisation it can sometimes seem that there is no more terrifying beast than the Luddite. | ||
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+ | In the closing years of the 18th century, the weaver’s profession would come under threat; not only from the introduction of new technology, but also from the newly emerging capitalist attitudes towards production. | ||
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+ | Indeed, many labourers and artisans worked only as long as needed to ensure that the immediate needs of their families were met; the idea of working to the clock for extra surplus value (profit) would have seemed somewhat ludicrous (…) | ||
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+ | It wasn’t just family ties that were closer thanks to pre-capitalist production methods, community life benefited as well. (…) Every weaving district had its weaver-poets, | ||
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+ | As capitalism progressed, knowledge has been reduced to a meritocratic means-to-an-end (qualification) rather than an end in its own right; and in wealthier countries the self-educated polymath has become an endangered species. | ||
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+ | Robbed of their traditional land-rights, | ||
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+ | Byron’s speech was loaded with sarcastic references to the ' | ||
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+ | (…) Frame breaking in Nottinghamshire became even less frequent, although 1812 did see regular food riots in the area which were themselves a by-product of the hardship created by the introduction of the mechanical looms. | ||
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+ | Having borne the brunt of the industrialisation for three decades, they knew better than most what factories and machines could do to the welfare of the local population. In living memory the vast majority of the well-fed peasantry and relatively wealthy artisans had been reduced to powerless, starving proletariat - and all in the name of progress. | ||
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+ | In Luddite circles, taking an oath was known as ' | ||
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+ | Prior to 1813, the Luddites had wanted to save an autonomous, communal way of life based on self-sufficiency and skilled craftsmanship. Later loom-breaking incidents were almost exclusively centred around disputes regarding levels of pay; reflecting the later (and modern) labour movement, which claimed to stand against capitalism, but failed to question the central tenets of the ' | ||
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+ | Put simply, pre-modern resistance was a fight against enclosure - a battle to save independent, | ||
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+ | Our societies have been so comprehensively remade in the image of capital that it is hard to talk about concepts like self-sufficiency, | ||
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+ | The land-based movements of the twenty-first century (MST in Brazil, EZLN in Mexico, Landless People Movement in South Africa, Bhumi Uched Pratirodh Committee in India…) may have little hope of becoming a worldwide revolution - certainly not within the time-scale dictated by catastrophic climate change or peak-oil - but these communities may yet prove to be the most resilient in the face of an unfolding collapse. | ||
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+ | This should start with accepting that the Luddites were right. The Thing - the state -industrial nexus which Cobbett identified in its infancy - is now the dominant force in the world, and its mythology shapes the times we live in. Today the mill owners are global brands. | ||
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+ | (…) It’s going to mean developing and using human-scale technologies which can augment our liberty and self-sufficiency rather than enslaving us to a grid. It’s going to mean hand-looms rather than wide-frames; | ||
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+ | If you take a visit to one of the many websites which encourage a little technical tinkering, you’ll find a combination of free and open information, | ||
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+ | We are now, in other words, approaching a position where it may be possible to create once again an infrastructure built upon localised, craft-orientated, | ||
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+ | Much of it (appropriate technology movement) focused (…) on simple technologies that could be put to work by ordinary people without six-figure incomes, doing the work themselves, using ordinary tools and readily available resources. | ||
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+ | I see at least some spark of a hopeful future in the development, | ||
+ | Related: [[fringejoyride_residency_notes]] | ||